COVID‐19 Wage Subsidy for August 2021 - closes on Friday 3rd September 2021
Application now open
The COVID-19 August 2021 Wage subsidy application are now available, as of last Friday (20th August) for all businesses in New Zealand including self‐employed businesses, as long as they meet the eligibility criteria set by the Ministry of Social Development. Application is expected to remain open for 2 weeks from 20th August.
1. Eligibility Criteria
All NZ Businesses must meet the following criteria to be able to apply for wage subsidies
a. Business operation must be registered for self-empoyed, NZBN must be obtained before they can apply for wage subsidies. NZBN can be obtained from the following website.
b. Registered Charitable Organisations can apply for the wage subsidy
c. A society must be an incorporated society and must be registered with the Societies Register
d. A commonly‐owned group is a group of companies which employs all staff through one company whilst employees can carry out their work at other companies within the group. All companies must have an ownership structure which is identical. If this is the case, the group will be treated as one company and thus the whole group will need to meet the eligibility criteria for wage subsidies and resurgence support payments.
2. Business must meet the revenue decline test
a. Business must be affected by the increase in the Alert level announced on 17 August 2021 and;
b. That business has experienced or expects to experience a drop in revenue that is directly due to the alert level increase and that is;
c. At least 40% decline over the period between 17 August 2021 and 30 August 2021 inclusive, compared to a normal 14‐day consecutive period of revenue in the six weeks immediately before the increase in the alert level on 17 August 2021; or
d. If the business is exposed to a high seasonality revenue fluctuations, the business must have at least 40% drop in revenue compared to the same 14-day consecutive period in the 2020 or 2019 calendar. It must be demonstrated and proven that the business has seasonality in revenue and any drop in revenue must be directly as a result of the alert level increase, not because of Covid 19 in general, and;
e. For the purpose of the revenue decline test, the following income/revenue will be excluded in the test:
‐ any wage subsidies
‐ other Covid19 relief payments
‐ short‐term absence payment
‐ leave support payment scheme
‐ C19 essential workers leave support scheme
‐ C19 resurgence support payment
‐ C19 small business cashflow loan
f. If the business is a pre‐revenue business, there must be a decline in capital raising ability by 40%.
g. A grant or capital injection will be treated as revenue if your business is:
‐ Research & Development oriented business including “Start‐ups” and
‐ You have no revenue other than venture capital, government funding or equity funding.
3. Commonly‐owned groups
a. The whole group must use the default comparator period to calculate the revenue drop across the whole business units in the group or
b. You can use the seasonal comparator if seasonality is usually expected and a part of the business
4. Evidence & Proof
All businesses who apply for wage subsidies must prepare and retain evidences to support their declaration:
a. How the revenue drop has been calculated and was attributable to the move to the alert level (not because of Covid19 in general) and;
b. If you are an employer that has highly seasonal revenue:
‐ the basis on which you determine the seasonality and;
‐ how the seasonal nature of the business made it more difficult for your business to meet the 40% revenue decline using the default comparator period.
5. To Apply directly
a. If you are an employer (less than 80 employees) – include any shareholder employees if receiving shareholder salaries via PAYE: APPLY HERE
b. If you are a self‐employed – ensure you obtain NZBN prior to applying for wage subsidies: APPLY HERE
6. To Apply via Biz Solutions
a. Please click here to read and sign the declaration page. Return this to us once signed.
b. Please provide the following information (we should have most of these information recorded on our file):
- business IRD number (this could include your partnership IRD number or company IRD number)
- IR customer name (this is the name that's linked to your business IRD number)
- New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) if you have one
- business address
- contact name, email address and mobile number
- bank account number (where wage subsidy will be paid into)
- employee details (include full-time and part-time employees in the same application)
- name
- date of birth
- IRD number
- employment type (whether they're working less than 20 hours, or 20 hours or more)
c. Our Fees
Our application fee will be starting from $150 + gst.
Note that additional charge may apply depending on the number of employees in the entities and/or information that requires to be verified to check level of revenue, commonly-owned group status etc.
For more information
Please visit the following website if you would like more information about wage subsidies (August 2021)
If you would like any further assistance or have any questions in regards to the wage subsidies for August 2021, please get in touch with one of our friendly staff at Biz Solutions either via phone call or email. We are here to help your businesses to make the most out of this difficult time.
You may also be eligible to claim COVID resurgence support payment and we will send you detailed information about this tomorrow 24 August 2021 once the application is open via IRD website.
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